Teaching Writing

This is a post I wrote before the holidays and apparently it was never published. I have an update to it because last week I taught the four day Writers Studio at UCLA Extension, and this week I started a new course “Kicking in the Wall”. So let me just add that I’ve…

A spot has just opened up for my October Writers Retreat in Lake Arrowhead held at the UCLA Conference Center. If you’re interested please email me and I’ll send you an application. The cost is $820 and this includes room and board (fabulous meals! plus wine), workshops, one on ones with me, tips, everything. All…

The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing. – Socrates And this is the starting point for each book, each poem, each essay. You don’t come to this work with your story all worked out neatly in your head, ready to be placed on the page complete and perfect. I tell myself…

My next writing retreat in Lake Arrowhead at the UCLA Conference Center will be held October 2 – 4, 2015. There’s now a waiting list and I’ve been thinking of possibly giving another retreat either in November or early spring. Please email me if you’re interested in signing up for the later retreat or getting on…

The idea for my book Kicking in the Wall, which was published by New World Library last year, was inspired by a quote from Patti Smith: “I would go as far as I could and hit a wall, my own imagined limitations. And then I met a fellow who gave me his secret, and it…

Okay, I’m a broken record on this subject but I’m blessed by having some of the most interesting people in L.A. as students. I conducted a workshop in Lake Arrowhead earlier this month and these terrific people above showed up. Literally we laughed and cried for three days. Frankly I think that people who have…

Someone had to drop out of my Lake Arrowhead Writers Retreat for May 2 – 4. If anyone wants to take his spot please leave me a message and I’ll get right back to you with info. Thanks. And a happy Easter and Passover to all of you!

I’m celebrating! I just finished the essay I was grumbling and fretting and trying to keep calm about a few posts ago. (It’ll be in an anthology about faith edited by Victoria Zackheim and published next year by Simon and Schuster.) You go through such doubt and chaos before you find what you’re really writing…

It’s fall. Back to school time. I’ll be teaching a three hour writing workshop at Book Passage next Saturday in Corte Madera, California – one of the all time great bookstores. If you live in or around San Francisco and want a kiicking in the wall kind of workshop to get you jumpstarted with your writing…

Did you see it last night? In Santa Monica it was coming in and out of clouds. I was emailing to friends who were also watching it, and it seemed like this wonderfu community event. And it was! Another community event this weekend was all the amazing people who showed up Saturday for my writing…